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Sunday, July 7, 2013

Hazmat Inspections – A local Response

In the light of the lack of inspections of the West
Fertilizer facility before it blew up, there is an increasing concern about
someone taking a look at the safety of all sorts of hazardous material storage
areas across the country. This makes a recent
short article at SacBee.com more than a little scary. (NOTE: This is an
article based upon an original article in the Orange County (CA) Register, but
that paper requires a subscription or pay-per-view for web access, so I’ll have
to rely on SacBee.com for my limited facts.)

It seems that there have been accusations that the local
fire authority has been charging for hazmat inspections that it hasn’t been
doing or maybe just not properly documenting. In any case there has been enough
of concern about the issue to transfer the responsibility for the hazmat
inspections to the local Health Care Agency.

Hazmat Inspections

The West Fertilizer incident clearly underlines the point
that the government (at multiple levels and multiple agencies) has been less
that attentive to the matter of insuring the proper storage and handling of
hazardous materials. Part of the problem has been legislative, part manpower
(which is also legislative at its base), and part a reluctance to upset the
economic applecart.

At the Federal level there is no quick action (regardless of
Sen. Boxer’s demand) to the problem. Even if the Congress were to appropriate
and authorize a billion dollar federal inspection program today, it would be a
decade before the action could possibly show real improvement. Just look at the
CFATS problems with responsibility for only 4,000 facilities.

Realistically there is only one agency that is going to have
any chance of starting to improve any of this in the near term and that is the
local fire department. They are already supposed to be notified about the
possession of any of a limited number of hazardous chemicals by a commercial
entity (and no, ammonium nitrate fertilizer didn’t make that cut; reactive
chemicals in general have been ignored by Congress and the Executive Branch –
other than the CSB which has been a voice crying in the wilderness on this
issue). And more importantly, the local fire department is the agency that is
going to bear the brunt of any response to a hazmat incident.

Now the big problem here is the matter of expertise. Hazmat
response is a specialized part of the fire-fighting profession and not all city
fire departments have that expertise on hand. And volunteer fire departments
are almost universally lacking in this training because of funding issues. But,
even without specific expertise in hazmat response, veteran firefighters are
going to have some idea about safe storage and handling of at least flammable
liquids and gasses.

At a minimum, having local fire inspectors or experienced
fire fighters walking through facilities that handle significant amounts of
hazardous materials will be a first step in reducing the hazards to local
communities. Providing specific hazmat inspection training and funding for that
training would be a relatively low cost to improve that first step
significantly.

Health Department
Inspections

I have been advocating for a number of years now that the
current community right-to-know laws ought to be expanded to include mandating
notification of local health authorities of the storage of hazardous materials,
particularly toxic materials. My reasoning is that the local hospitals and
emergency rooms will bear the onus of medically treating the victims of any
release. Proper planning for chemical mass casualty events will require
foreknowledge of the chemicals involved and that is not currently guaranteed.

Adding hazmat inspections to the load of the local health
department was never part of that suggestion. Now it seems (according to their web site) that the Orange County, CA
Health Care Agency does already have some industrial response responsibility (mostly
for industrial cleanup oversight and underground storage tank oversight), but
that is not quite the same thing as having expertise in the storage and
handling of bulk hazardous chemicals.

An argument could certainly be made that local health
department could have some sort of oversight responsibility for industrial hygiene
at such facilities, but even that requires specialized training and knowledge
that would not be found at most health departments. And let’s not even talk
about the expense of such a program when health department funding is already
very tight.

Moving Forward

We have come a long way in industrial chemical safety over
the last forty years or so. And we still have a long way to go. Solving the
problems that were highlighted by the West Fertilizer explosion will not be
easy or cheap. Local communities not wanting to wait a decade (or more) for an effective
response by the Federal government should take a first step by having their
local fire departments take a more proactive role in inspecting facilities that
contain significant (reportable) quantities of hazardous chemicals.

Because of training limitations (a correctable problem in a shorter
time frame than waiting for federal inspections), those inspections may not be
perfect, but they will be a valuable first step.

1 comment:

The State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs) are a good place to encourage and/or require local FDs to understand the HazMat's at the facilities they cover. While I was on the Wyoming SERC, we had an Industrial Subcommittee that was working on ideas to get FD's and industry engaged before an accident occurs.

About Me

I spent 15 years in the US Army as an Infantry NCO. After getting out of the Army I started working in the chemical industry, getting my BSc Chemistry degree while working as a technician. I spent 12 years working as a process chemist in a specialty chemical company. Most recently I worked as a QA/R&D Manager in a specialty chemical manufacturing facility. Currently I am working as a freelance writer.